Obama’s Choice of Kehinde Wiley Just got Political

Kehinde Wiley Fishermen Upon a Lee-shore, in Squally Weather (Zakary Antoine), 2017 (above) Courtesy Kehinde Wiley and STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY, London

Barack Obama’s choice, last month, to appoint Kehinde Wiley to paint his portrait to be displayed at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery could hardly be more timely. As in Michelle Obama’s selection of  Amy Sherald as her artist,  Barack’s choice is current, progressive and as of last week, political.

Emma Amos Eva the Babysitter, 1973 (above) Courtesy Emma Amos, The Amos Family and  RYAN LEE GALLERY (Tate Modern)

Barkley L. Hendricks Icon for My Man Superman (Superman never saved any black people — Bobby Seale), 1969. Courtesy JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY

Kehinde Wiley is no Wadsworth Jarrell, Emma Amos (top), or Barkley L. Hendricks (above) whose Civil Rights Movement inspired artwork, mostly from the late 1960s and 1970s, was exhibited recently at London’s Tate Modern’s Soul of a Nation Art in the Age of Black Power. Yet Wiley is influenced by these predecessors and his work remains relevant in a similar way.  Less militant and of a different time, Wiley’s art not only addresses local issues, it also tackles global  tensions relating to predomnantly male identity and acceptance, across China, Brazil, India & Sri Lanka, Lagos & Dakar, and more recently, Israel. This was seen in Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel in New York’s Jewish Museum in 2012.

Kehinde Wiley Abed Al Ashe and Chaled El Awari (The World Stage: Israel), 2011(© Kehinde Wiley; Courtesy Roberts & Tilton, CA) (above)

Detail from Kehinde Wiley Kalkidan Mashasha (The World Stage: Israel), 2011               (All images courtesy the Jewish Museum.) (above)

Wiley’s portraits, often focusing on the male skin and body as art, are softened by textiles, pattern and a certain vulnerability. Wiley is best known for substituting the elite and often religious subjects of traditional old master paintings with contemporary African-Americans, emphasizing their absence in these historic paintings.  By challenging accepted historic norms, Wiley comments on “the signifiers of power, the implications of the traditional portrait, which are about privilege, power, elitism…..that he was not included in.” (New York Times)

Kehinde Wiley  Leviathan Zodiac, 2011. Courtesy of Roberts & Tilton, California. © Kehinde Wiley.

His work has a contemplative and reflective quality with his current solo show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London  (see London’s Evening Standard) depicting everyday real Haitians (with their names in the titles) painted in heroic, maritime poses, as in Fishermen Upon a Lee-shore, in Squally Weather (Zakary Antoine), 2017 (image at top). Lacking the technical complexity of his earlier works, these portraits of migrants or seafarers, fisherman or villagers,  have acquired heightened political status, due to the Department of Homeland Security’s termination, last week, of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted by Barack Obama, to Haitians in the US.

With irony as the main ingredient of Wiley’s art, the timing of the exhibition of his Haitian portraits is not to be underestimated. Due to the secrecy shrouding Barack Obama’s anticipated portrait, it will be interesting to see to what extent Kehinde Wiley will reflect this relevant humanitarian TPS issue.

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Is Manhattan’s art epicenter shifting?

Despite the Whitney Museum doubling its attendance with its new building and the High Line attracting over four million visitors a year, gentrification in that Meatpacking district has forced many artists and art lovers to look elsewhere. The Met Breuer on the upper seat side in the iconic brutalist Breuer-designed old Whitney building is attempting to shake things up in the age-old Upper East. MOMA is building a stunning new extension with Jean Nouvel‘s skyscraper above, but with prices starting at $3m per apartment (and increasing to $70 million) it is not a real contender for changing the face of the neighborhood.

Midtown was known in the 1950s as the center of Abstract Expressionism, followed by Soho a decade later, then Chelsea with some current re-emergence in the Upper East Side. However none of this is static. According to David Halle and Elisabeth Tiso in their 2014 book New York’s New Edge “When one site loses dominance, galleries do not disperse, but a new dominant center emerges, at least so far.”

What is happening in Harlem is a result of this movement. With Columbia University adding its new 60,000 sq ft Lenfest Center for the Arts building to their Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, and with the Studio Museum, at 144 W125th St, led by Thelma Golden, planning a 82,000 sq ft building project of  $175m at their existing location, it will be interesting to see whether this seismic shift is possible.

Both new institutions promise collaboration and integration with their surrounding communities. Carol Becker, Dean of the School of the Arts describes their goal to create a “welcoming venue” which encourages collaboration between “students, faculty and guest artists”, as well as “fostering connections to the always vibrant art scene in Harlem and beyond.”

  

Photo: Thelma Golden (WSJ) Photo: David Adjaye (Alamy in Architectural Digest)

Adjaye Asociates, led by the British Sir David Adjaye OBE, of Ghanaian descent, architect of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C.  is planning to display art in the surrounding environment, on the street and terraces, in an attempt to embrace surrounding areas, blurring inside and outside boundaries and encouraging the participation of the public.

Photo: The museum’s rear façade. (Courtesy of the Studio Museum)

Whilst Adjaye, has been a consistent and somewhat familiar figure, coming-of-age as I did, in the 1990s London architecture scene,  I  “discovered” Ms Golden much more recently when browsing through the colorful pages of  “In The Company Of Women” following which I saw her featured in Vogue,  and established her synonymous relationship with the local Harlem and broader international art scene.

With her cosmopolitan dynamism and dress sense (with clothes designed by her fashion designer husband Duru Olowu) , I believe that she has single-handedly assisted with removing the stuffiness from art and reinvigorating it with some much needed visionary aplomb and direction, akin to a revolution-of-sorts. Harlem has gained not only a formidable art force, but “a new cultural leader to the neighborhood”.

The “Harlem-need” factor, described by Glenn D Lowry (director of MOMA) embraces community and diversity and is a welcome antidote to these troubled political times. With the 2021 anticipated launch I predict that a very different Harlem will embrace its opening. West Harlem is ready. Whether this project will have a knock-on effect on East Harlem, where the essence of community was replaced, decades earlier, by looming tower blocks, as recorded in Robert Kangel’s Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs, remains to be seen. I hope that the more western Studio Museum,  can welcome a new era of integration between East and West Harlem,  emphasizing continual progress and creating an exciting future.

“Here comes the new. Look out. There goes the sad stuff. The things-nobody-could-help stuff. The way everybody was then and there. Forget that. History is over, you all, and everything’s ahead at last.” (Toni Morrison: Jazz)

Whether Harlem will once again sing like Toni Morrison’s Jazz novel, providing the pulse to the art world, is not even questionable. It already is.